Today’s post was going to focus on blogging and in the world apart from social media and web-centric life. While this was the goal, a tweet showed up on my stream:

Apparently Wired announced the The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet. Well, it does not take reading that article at all to announce the web is far from dead. But let’s continue with this argument for the sake of beginners and people who worry about the future.

Wired argues that apps (meaning applications) are taking over the world. And while the internet is available on more things; think of your phone, your game console, even the DVR that streams Netflix; people are not actually on the web.

Well, first off the number of people on the web has grown substantially over the last 15 years. Then few people had dial up internet, waiting forever for the whir and pop that your connection actually reached an open line and connected. Then came broadband and cable. All 3 I got when these were fairly new and geeky phenomena.

Photo by Todd Huffman WiFi in Afghanistan

Yet now these are common and growing, as more and more people join the online community. This means that the graphics of people doing this or that on WIRED is total bunk! People AROUND THE WORLD expect to have these  connections and even better to have WiFi so we can connect where ever we are with whatever piece of technology we have with us at the time.

In this aspect, I am behind. The last job and then lack there of have kept my personal technology behind. My cell phone recently died, and I finally got a Blackberry. Since I  send daily pictures to Facebook and Posterous, I quickly got the Facebook app. “It makes Facebook easier” and takes your Blackberry from quick, back to dial up days of Internet and computing speed.

Let me assure you, I got that off  my Blackberry quicker than… well,  my boyfriend’s favorite quote. Do I really think that apps are going to take over? NO. Some people will always value quality over convenience.

Another thing is that this goes back to the fallacy pointed out in the DoFollow myth with people making certain everything they do is Google friendly. Did I find that article by visiting Wired or Nieman Journalism Lab?

No, I had never even heard of Nieman Journalism Lab. I found the article because Bill tweeted it. Since I trust Bill’s judgment and the title seemed interesting I read it. How did I find the other articles? I clicked the links included the first article.

With many articles I would read some comments to see various arguments. Someone with good points I would click their name to see their blog. Then read their articles, and comments and continue this post on for days as I again and again point out that social networking is going to keep the web growing for years to come.

And yet as I do want to continue to have posts for the rest of the week I shall end my argument here.

Speaking of social networking, join my fan page Facebook.com/LoveRockstar and Twitter Twitter.com/Loverockstar and while we are being social, visit Bill Hibbler.Com

Live ♥ Laugh ♥ Love

MJ Schrader

Bill Hibbler is a wonderful expert, who helped me create the quote I use as part of my branding.   “Making your inner rockstar shine in business and life.”    This brief sentence encapsulates who I am and what I do for you in 30 seconds.  You want to be a rockstar at least in spirit and that is my job.

Jim Fisher from OutsourcingControl.com asked me about All in One SEO on Monday.   While is a fellow #Blog30 person he is also someone I met in person during Unseminar7.  He is a great person to follow on Twitter @OutsourceJim and a great guy.   Although he was asking me about how to use All in One SEO, I had to confess I switched to Platinum SEO.

However since many people may already have All in One or may be curious about it, I will go over both.

All in One SEO Settings

You can change the All in One SEO Settings by visiting the Settings tab on your dashboard. After installation this is where you will go to enable the plugin, because while you may have activated it, it will not be enabled.  Also this will have various other settings to adjust.  Here you can add your Home Page title, Home Description, and keywords related to your site. Since I am not an SEO expert, I recommend leaving the other settings as is.

All in One SEO on toast… sorry on post

Once you are finished writing your posts or page, scroll past the publish all the way to the bottom. There you will see All in One SEO. Here you can copy your post title into the meta title. Write a brief description of the material you covered. This is the description that you see when you type in a search. Next you want to type in words related to your post. The problem with Meta Keywords is that some search engines now ignore them. Too many people added keywords that were not relevant, so search engines started searching the actual article. Below that is a button to disable it on that page or post.  In this image below, you can see what this looks like with Platinum SEO, All in One looks similar until the part beneath keywords.

Platinum SEO

Platinum is in a separate box on the dashboard. You can change the settings in similar fashion to All in One. On your posts, you again will scroll to the bottom and add your Meta Title, Meta Description and keywords. There are boxes you can change beneath it, since I am not an SEO expert, and do not play one on TV I ignore these.

Why I switched

Platinum SEO does not ask for a donation with every upgrade as All in One SEO does. More importantly, should I change a permalink, Platinum SEO will do an automatic 301 redirect, which helps search engines and my readers find what they are wanting.  In addition, in the settings box I can migrate all my All in One SEO things to platinum.  (Note: You will want to back up your blog as a precaution.)  Also you need one or the other not both.  Too many plugins can cause website problems.

~ MJ Schrader

History

Originally WordPress had categories. But after a while a category would start to get too many articles and bloggers broke down the categories further. This started creating long lists of Categories. Thus tags were born.

Molina's Green Enchiladas

Categories

Categories are the broad term, they help categorize your posts. You can have long keyword phrases; which is a three or four word phrase, as a category. Create unique to your blog phrase for a category name. A category name could be “Dallas Mexican Restaurants” which is a long keyword phrase or “Mex-Food that Rocks” for something unique. But you can also have sub-categories. This great for “Dallas Restaurants” and the sub-category of “Mexican” or “Italian.”

Tags

You use tags to identify terms related to your blog post. These are terms that help readers of your blog and first time visitors identify the content. Unlike the above categories, you only want to use one or two words as tags. Tags related to the post above could be things like “tortillas, margaritas, live mariachis, green enchiladas, chicken tacos” and other related terms.

Time to Bust that Duplicate Content Myth. (Does this make me an honorary myth buster?) Using previously published articles (Ezine Articles) does not mean you are going to suffer the wrath of Google and suffer the dreaded “Duplicate Content Penalty”

According to Google Webmaster Central Blog

“Let’s put this to bed once and for all, folks: There’s no such thing as a ‘duplicate content penalty.’ At least, not in the way most people mean when they say that.”

If you respect your readers, your guest bloggers and article authors, then you should not worry. If you are trying to deceive readers or search engines then you will get in trouble.

URLs

The name of your website is important but so is the form. Decide if you are going to include www or not. Try to keep one page from having multiple names, such as example.com, example.com/?, www.example.com, example.com/index.   This is where the Duplicate Content lives, not a unique website.

Create Unique Website

The key is creating a unique website, which means including some original content. This could be re-writes of private label articles, guest bloggers with content limited to your website or your own writing. Add links to related sites you like. Encourage other related sites to link back to you.

Articles

Using articles from article sites does not mean you are going to get the Google slap either. The combination of articles you choose creates a site that is all your own. When you also are certain to provide unique content in addition to those articles. By adding the resource box and author box you are verifying that you did not scrape (steal) the articles and verifying where you got the article. Then search engines view your site as a whole.

Search Engine Results

Content is King. By providing content you are meeting visitors and search engine requirements. With your whole site and the content provided, search engines give results of the best overall site for a particular search.

A visual example

There are a dozen quilters all of them are going to use one Sunbonnet Sue Quilt Square. While that one square is exactly the same, the quilts will not be duplicates of each other. Maybe one does a lap quilt. Another a King. Perhaps one uses borders for each square. Another uses a honey comb design around the Sunbonnet Sue. The Square could be on the top left, the bottom right, dead center. This is not duplicate content just like your website is not duplicate content.

~ MJ Schrader